Top secret: Why Pavey is on mission to keep record bid quiet

While other British athletes were competing for places in the European indoor championships team, Jo Pavey was in Portugal on a secret mission, readying herself for an attack on a world record.

Secrecy was necessary because Ian Stewart, director of Saturday's Norwich Union Indoor Grand Prix in Birmingham, feared that if Pavey's plans leaked to the Ethiopians they would want to muscle in on the occasion.

Losing out to Africans is the story of Pavey's athletic career. She became the fastest-ever Briton over 3000 metres indoors 10 days ago, the fastest from the Commonwealth and second fastest from Europe, and you can be forgiven for not having noticed. She finished third, behind two Africans who each beat the previous world record.

So when Stewart offered Pavey the chance to raise her profile by attacking the world two-mile record during his televised meeting, he also promised that the field would be kept clear of Africans likely to steal her thunder. That means Ethiopians.

You might call that a fixed race but, since the days of Roger Bannister's first sub-four-minute mile, fields have been engineered to give one runner a chance of a record. And in this era of overwhelming African superiority in endurance events, Europeans need every help they can get.

Pavey, 33, lives the monastic existence of the full-time runner, trains harder than most men and, in that last race, improved her best by three seconds. Unfortunately for her, the Ethiopians improved by seven seconds. "They keep moving the goalposts, taking it to a new level. It's so frustrating," she says.

Jo (nee Davis) was a teenage prodigy who took an eight-year break to concentrate on her education and then train as a physiotherapist. She missed two more years with injury, before resuming her running career in 2000, when she would run 35 miles each week.

This figure has now been upped to 100, much of it at high altitude as the Ethiopians do and at increasing pace under the guidance of her husband and coach, Gavin.

It is a mind-numbing distance given that women were thought too delicate to race beyond 800 metres until the 1972 Olympic Games. The heavy mileage has meant Pavey has continued to improve. But so do the times of the Ethiopians.

Unbelievably, an Ethiopian woman has run the last lap of a 5000 metres in 56 seconds. "I could never do that," admits Pavey.

So should non-Africans give up the chase, accept they are second best and concentrate on competitions in Europe they can win? Not to Pavey's thinking. "That would be negative. I relish the challenge," she says.

"You can't think they are always going to be awesome in every race. Everybody has a bad race. You have to treat them as any other athlete, go out to win and believe you are racing them.

"There's no reason why we can't. I'm under no illusions how tough it is but you can only work on improving, train harder, increase the mileage, get tougher. And in the end, perhaps, it could be that with the right tactics you can beat them."

The Ethiopians' strength is an ability to raise the pace for the last lap after an obliging opponent, often in the past Pavey's contemporary, Paula Radcliffe, has tried to run their legs off for lap after lap in a desperate effort to burn off their finish. Like trying to run away from your own shadow.

Pavey saw the seeds of an idea for a possible alternative in the Olympic 5000 metres final in Athens. Meseret Defar, the same Ethiopian who set the world indoor record ahead of her 10 days ago, also won that day but, exhausted as was everybody else by crazy surges by a Chinese and a Turk, she managed only a last lap of 68 seconds. Could these surges become a winning strategy for one tough enough?

Pavey thinks the strategy might have potential over 10,000 metres. After the European indoors in Birmingham next month, when she will start the 3000 as firm favourite, she will seek to qualify herself at 10,000 metres for the right to represent Britain at the two longest track events at the world championships in Osaka.

First though is the world record attempt. Two miles indoor is rarely run. The existing record is 9min 23.38 sec, set by American Regina Jacobs in 2002. Second behind Jacobs was the Ethiopian Defar. At least Pavey won't have her to worry about on Saturday.